


We Lost Liam

by Mellow_Yellow



Series: Adventures in Babysitting [1]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Babysitting, Fluff, Gallavich, Kids, M/M, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 02:53:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2092911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellow_Yellow/pseuds/Mellow_Yellow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They lost Liam, you guys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Lost Liam

As he looked at the baby staring up at him, the temptation to try and make its first words be “fuck” or “shit” was strong. Using all his willpower, Mickey resisted the best he could. Instead, he picked up a toy from the stroller as he knelt on the sidewalk beside his son. 

“Bear,” he said, speaking softly because he felt stupid as hell as he waved Yevgeny’s small stuffed bear in the baby’s face in what he hoped was a hypnotic rhythm. “Bear.”

Yevgeny looked past the bear and focused on Mickey’s face, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open a little bit, like he was mesmerized. 

“Buh-airrrr,” Mickey enunciated slowly. The baby made a humming sound, drool dripping from his open mouth in a string. Mickey automatically reached a hand out to wipe it away but Yevgeny grabbed his middle finger before Mickey could reach the little chin. He found himself frozen, watching his son watch him as he grabbed the larger hand in his.

“Should I leave you two alone?”

Mickey jerked at the teasing voice, but Yevgeny didn’t release his hand so Mickey craned his neck up to meet Ian’s gaze from where he was looming above the man and baby.

Pulling so Yevgeny moved with the motion, Mickey flicked Ian off, but he felt like the gravity wasn’t really there with a baby hanging off his hand.

Ian smiled, looking around absently. “Where’s Liam?” Ian’s idle smile began to dim as he leaned to look on the other side of the stroller. “Wait, where is Liam?”

Mickey frowned, glancing around. Where was Liam indeed. He liked Liam. Liam was cute, and he didn’t give any lip, and he giggled a lot. He was easy to be around, and Mickey liked the feel of his warm little hand when it wrapped around his hand. That being said, Mickey’s experience with babies was crazy minimal, even if he had just spent the day pushing his own son in a stroller and dragging Ian’s little brother around Brookfield Zoo, so at first he didn’t really follow why Ian went pale when he realized Liam was missing.

“I thought you were watching him,” Ian said sharply. 

Mickey looked around himself, and when he didn’t see a little half-black toddler, he pulled his hand from Yevgeny’s grip and stood up. “I guess I thought he was with you.”

Ian spun in a circle, scanning the area, going up on his tiptoes to gain a better vantage point. He settled back onto his heels, fingers twitching in anxiety. “I don’t see him,” he said.

“Maybe if we just wait here, he’ll find us,” Mickey suggested with a shrug.

“Yeah, mhm, that’s a great idea,” Ian murmured thoughtfully, catching Mickey off guard. “Good thinking.”

“Really?” Mickey asked, skeptically.

Ian dropped his complacent expression and began whacking Mickey over the head with his backpack. “No, not really, you fucking asshole! He’s a baby! Babies don’t come back to where you leave them, my brother isn’t a fucking golden retriever!”

“Jesus, okay, I’m sorry!” Mickey shouted, trying to avoid the backpack. “Ow! Ow, Ian, damnit, that backpack is heavy as shit.”

Ian hit him one more time, hard, on the shoulder, then relented. “That’s what you get. Shit.” He dropped the backpack to his feet and wrapped his long fingers as far as he could reach around his own head. “Shit. We lost Liam.” 

The gravity of the situation was starting to sink in for Mickey, because as he watched Ian panic, he started to panic, until they were both looking around the bus stop, equally wild-eyed. 

“Fuck, he’s tiny. He can’t have gotten too far,” Mickey said finally. He gave Ian a shove in the direction of the parking lot. “You look that way. I’ll check the bathrooms.”

Ian was running in the other direction almost before the words were out of Mickey’s mouth.

“Goddamnit,” Mickey said under his breath. He looked down at Yevgeny, who was still looking at him in total absorption. “Staring’s rude, you know.” The baby didn’t agree, making a cooing sound and sucking on his own fist, never breaking his gaze. “Let’s go find Liam, before Ian fucking wastes my ass for losing his brother.” Shit, saying it out loud made it worse, fuck, he’d lost Liam. The more he thought about it, he realized he had been the one watching the little shit, but he’d gotten distracted. Distracted by the baby that was still staring at him, he realized, somewhat sourly.

He hurried away with the stroller, glancing in nooks and crannies and anywhere else a little shithead toddler would think to hide. Of course he didn’t see Liam anywhere. And today had been going so well up until now, too. 

Mickey had never been to Brookfield Zoo, or any zoo, actually. Ian hadn’t been to the zoo since he was little, but he said Fiona used to take them all the time when she’d worked for the Park District and managed to score a family pass on a massive discount. They used to spend afternoons there, and Ian would stare at the elephants for hours. When he’d told Mickey about it, Mickey had searched his brain for a snarky comment, but it was hard when Ian looked so wistful so he’d settled for a dismissive snort.

Ian had just shrugged and went back to tickling Yevgeny in his lap.

Ian was good about Yev, better than Mickey probably deserved. Ian never pushed Mickey about the baby, he let him take his time and set his own pace in trying to get over what the kid represented, what he reminded Mickey of every time he looked into the wide, familiar blue eyes. But while he was keeping the kid at arms length, Ian got busy sucking up to Yevgeny, and maybe he was just a natural with babies, but Yev just fucking fell in love with the redheaded idiot. Any time Ian came to the house, Yevgeny was immediately straining to escape the arms of whoever was holding him so the taller boy would scoop him up and spin him around, laughing and tickling Yev until he was breathless and red faced and it probably wasn’t good for a baby to get that excited but even Svetlana, queen of the hardasses, couldn’t seem to scold Ian or tell him to take it easy.

So Ian was good with Yev, and at first Mickey was all about it, because it took the heat off him if Ian was willing to take on his share of the parenting. And it was fine for a while, until Mickey started to get jealous.

It was a weird, subtle shift, that gradually became all he could fucking think about. He was jealous that Yev’s eyes lit up whenever Ian entered the room, and he was jealous that Ian would eagerly listen to Svetlana tell stories about what lame baby shit Yev had done that day (like, it was a baby, Mickey didn’t understand how Ian and Svetlana both found every detail of what he did so fascinating, but they did and it made him feel crazy hearing about how his son liked ducks or his son slept with his butt in the air or his son hated mangoes, and fuck, when had he started calling Yev his son so easily?), and he was jealous when he walked into the bedroom and saw Yev and Ian cuddled together with Ian holding the baby up so it could tap dance its little feet on his chest. He hated that this bubble had formed with Yevgeny at the middle of it and Mickey standing on the outside feeling like a loser looking in.

Finally one day he thought, fuck them, he could be a part of their lame little club if he wanted to be. So when Ian was running errands and Svetlana was distracted doing something somewhere else in the Milkovich house, Mickey had sat down beside the mat where Yevgeny was laying on his back, grasping for the mobile that hung above his face. The baby had startled at the movement and his big, alien head swiveled to pierce Mickey with a look.

“Sup,” Mickey said. 

He looked into Yev’s eyes, and at first it made his stomach clench, and his face feel hot and sweaty. But then he forced himself to be still until the feeling began to numb. And the longer he stared at the baby, the more he started to notice that his little stomach looked like it would be incredibly soft to the touch. He fought with himself for a good minute, but finally he gave in and stroked one finger down the round belly, the soft fuzz of his onesie tickling Mickey’s finger. 

The baby seemed just as shocked as Mickey at the touch, and he let loose a surprised, gurgling giggle, and before Mickey could think he was smiling a little too. Not a too-big Ian smile, but a secret smile, because maybe he could possibly understand what Ian and Svetlana and Mandy and Svetlana’s slutty girlfriend and pretty much everyone in the neighborhood who ran into Yev saw in the little shit. He may not get babies in general, but Yev, he was starting to see the appeal.

In the weeks after he first touched his son’s belly, it became less of a chore to be around him. He found himself looking forward to the hours he was in charge of the little guy, and the warm, soft feeling of the baby resting against his chest. 

At first Svetlana was suspicious, because she was suspicious about everything, Mickey assumed it was the Russian in her, but she kept her mouth shut. She would catch him touching Yev, running his hand over his silky head or tickling his feet when he sat on Ian’s lap, and she would give Mickey a hard look, like she was trying to dissect him with her eyes. It freaked Mickey out. It made him want to try and be more secretive, but it was tough. He found once he started stepping up with his kid, he didn’t want to step back down again. 

And if that realization didn’t fuck with his head, he didn’t know what did.

Mickey knew Ian was proud of him, not like he going to fucking confirm it with him like some queer looking for reassurance from his boyfriend. But he could tell when Ian rested a shoulder against the door frame and watched Mickey struggle to change a diaper (who was in charge of that fucking technology by the way, why in god’s name was it so fucking difficult to get the adhesive straps to stick to the diaper without getting caught on baby leg and making the baby screech til your eyes felt like they were going to pop out?). Or when he would carefully, casually set Yev in Mickey’s lap on the couch while he pretended to tie his shoe or look for something in the pocket of his coat and smile smugly when Mickey didn’t immediately shove the baby back at Ian once he settled onto the couch beside him. Or when Mickey would let the baby fall asleep on the bed beside him, and he would watch him (because Yev was pretty riveting to watch if you let yourself, his hands and fingernails and nose and eyelashes were so fucking tiny and delicate it was insane) and Ian would curl around Mickey and snuffle into the back of his neck, without saying anything. Mickey was eternally grateful at Ian’s ability to not say anything sometimes.

So when Ian had mentioned he was babysitting Liam while Fiona was at work and he’d managed to snag a free pass to the zoo, Mickey had mentioned bringing Yev along, half just because he liked the way it made Ian smile like a doofus.

It had been hot as the surface of the fucking sun, classic Chicago in July, but they’d lathered the kids in sunscreen and did a lap of the whole park. 

The zoo was cool as hell, Mickey wasn’t afraid to admit it. Liam loved the penguins, and they’d hung out in the downstairs viewing area for almost an hour while Liam stood at the cool glass, his hands pressed flat and his breath leaving a puff of moisture as he watched the penguins dart around in total fascination. 

Yev liked the giraffes, because there’d been a feeding demonstration and Mickey had lifted him so the giraffe had looked the baby right in the eye, a little distrustfully but patiently allowing the baby to stare. It had felt fucking magical and Ian had snapped a picture of the whole thing, Mickey making token complaints about the unexpected photo. And if later he’d stolen Ian’s phone and texted the image to himself, that was no one’s fucking business but his own.

There had even been a moment, all the more embarrassing for its secrecy, when Mickey had allowed himself to fantasize that this was his own little family, him and Ian as dads and Yev and Liam as their genetically incongruous children, and this was just something they did, normal shit like taking their kids to the zoo and grumbling about taxes and bickering over mowing the lawn or cooking dinner together every night, or whatever it was normal families that didn’t live in squalor like them did. When he’d found himself smiling at the indulgent fantasy, he’d tensed, glancing at Ian to see if he’d noticed. Ian was just smiling, holding Liam (who was a trooper but had started to fade around three o’clock and had been carried by Ian since then) so he could better see the lions sleeping in the sun.

Following his lead, because Ian’s lead was really the only lead he had when it came to dealing with kids, Mickey had unstrapped Yev from the stroller and hoisted him onto his waist so he could see the lions too. The baby had been more interested in pulling on Mickey’s hair and squirming until Mickey spun him around so he was facing out, but Ian still grinned at him like Mickey was a fucking natural. Which was laughable, but Mickey kind of forgot to sneer and just grinned back, helplessly, like a sap.

And now he’d gone and ruined the whole fucking day by losing Liam while he was distracted trying not to let himself teach his son a swear word. 

The afternoon was cooling down, and Mickey felt himself prickling with a cold sweat, thinking of Liam toddling around with that soft, trusting look on his face amongst a crowd of strangers. Poor Liam, always quiet and in the background, getting lost and forgotten about and left to wander into danger. Mickey had helped Ian track him down more than once when the nightmares from that fucking cocaine overdose drove him to hide around the house, and it always made him angry and sad seeing the little guy curled up under the stairs. 

He thought of how Liam learned to say Mickey’s name almost before Mickey could remember what Liam’s name even was, like the toddler quietly realized Mickey was going to become a fixture and he should get to work learning what to call him. 

Liam had what Mickey had decided (from an incredibly lame but nonetheless engrossing article in an outdated parenting magazine at the free clinic, it was nearly seven pages long and Mickey had read the whole damn thing, god fucking damnit) a self-soothing personality. Maybe it was a product of being the last in a big family consumed with its own dysfunction, or maybe Liam was just an especially relaxed kid. He reminded Mickey of Yev in that way, calm and smiley and also a bit stare-y, if you got down to it. Mickey felt a weird shortness of breath at the thought of Yev getting lost like Liam was. He felt breathless thinking of either of the kids alone in the zoo. 

And just like that, he knew where Liam was.

He was off and running back into the park, the stroller squeaking at the speed, Mickey too focused on his destination to worry about what a tool he looked like right now. He pulled out his phone and called Ian as he ran, who picked up mid-first ring. 

“Did you find him?” he demanded.

“I know where he is,” Mickey panted, huffing out where he was headed and then hung up, because man he was out of shape and he needed his air to make sure he got to the littlest Gallagher before the kid got snatched by some creep with a mustache.

He rounded the corner into the penguin enclosure so fast the stroller took the turn on two wheels. Yev made baby sounds but he was strapped in and Mickey was too busy booking it to the downstairs viewing area to slow down.

Liam was standing with his face practically pressed against the glass, watching the penguins dance in the water.

Mickey yanked the boy up and into his arms. “You little shit,” he said into Liam’s soft, springy hair.

“Mickey,” Liam said calmly, allowing Mickey to squeeze him to his chest a little.

“Why did you run away? You freaked me and Ian out,” Mickey demanded, like he expected Liam to come out with a long, involved explanation.

Instead, Liam gave an approximation of a toddler shrug. “Wanted to see the penguins.” The way he said “penguins” sounded like pen-ginns, and it made Mickey squeeze him again a little bit. Jesus christ kids were a pain in the ass.

“Liam!” Ian’s voice echoed across the room, and Mickey turned to see Ian practically vault over a railing to reach them. He pulled Liam from Mickey’s arms and wrapped him in a big hug.

Liam was smiling, putting both hands on Ian’s cheeks. “Ian!” he said brightly. 

“Fuck,” Ian muttered, pressing his face into Liam’s hair just as Mickey had done.

“Bad word,” Liam said. 

Mickey pointed in his little serene face. “Watch it pal, you’re on thin ice as it is.”

Watching Ian cuddle Liam, Mickey found himself glancing down at Yev in the stroller, who was unsurprisingly staring up at him with his characteristic wide eyes.

“You’re kind of creep, you know,” Mickey murmured. He bent down and released Yev from the stroller so he could hold him too. He immediately felt calmer when both kids were in arms reach of him.

When Mickey and Ian had more or less stopped panicking, they made their way out of the penguin habitat, Liam whining a little but quieting down at Mickey’s glare. Ian held the little boy even though he was easily capable of walking, and Mickey couldn’t really say anything because he was still holding Yev even though there was a perfectly good stroller right in front of him.

“Thanks for finding him. Good thinking about the penguins,” Ian said, reaching out to tuck a lock of Mickey’s overgrown hair behind his ear in a gesture that was incredibly gay and made shivers run down Mickey’s spine at the same time.

He shifted Yev in his arms, feeling uncomfortable. “Don’t thank me, jesus. I fucking lost him, I was the one who got distracted and let him wander off,” he said gruffly.

“Yeah, you’re the worst,” Ian said, without heat, and Mickey shoved him with his shoulder, laughing and feeling his cheeks heat when Ian smiled back at him with that doofy wide smile of his.

They walked slowly to the exit, even though they were about to miss their bus. Neither Mickey nor Ian felt inclined to speed up past a wander, each holding a kid in one arm and steering the stroller with the other. Mickey didn’t move when Ian covered his hand on the handle with his wider, freckled one. Yev konked out almost immediately, going heavy in Mickey’s arms (why did kids suddenly become dense as a black hole when they fell asleep, god the kid suddenly weighed a metric ton) and Liam was drooping in Ian’s, the heat having wiped out both babies faster than any actual activity could have done.

“So, this stays between you, me and the penguins, right?” Ian said after a while.

Mickey thought of Fiona or Lip’s faces if they tried to explain that yeah, they’d manage to misplace Liam in a crowded zoo for over half an hour. He swallowed, ready to take his fuck-up to his grave. “Yep, sounds like a plan.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a series I'm trying out, about Ian and Mickey discovering together how kids are both the shit and fucking terrifying at the same time. Generally, this will cover all the ways Ian and Mickey manage to both fuck up and knock it out of the park in the field of kid-watching. I've got the next few planned, but if you have any ideas or prompts about babysitting drama you'd like to see, hit me up in the comments.


End file.
